Sometimes when I feel my heart
harden, become quartzite, a stone
hard enough to cut my tooth, hard
enough to cut the blade of a knife,
I let myself be led
into the narrow and moss-soft gorges
of the Appalachians.
The creek here has rendered the sandstone
edges into rounded walls
where hemlock and dark green lichen grow.
It’s no revelation that this church
of curves is the work of water.
Still, when my friend Paul mentions
that only because the water is moving
is it able to erode the stone, the knowledge
washes me new. How long have I been settled
in a quiet pool?
I have tried not to move, tried not
to be tumbled. For a moment,
I envy the rounded bit of quartzite
Paul holds in his palm.
No, I tell myself. That would only change
the surface of things. What is smoothed
is no less hard. I turn to the ferns
growing out of the rock. Time
for a new metaphor.